Seonghee Ha, The Brush and the Blade

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We cordially invite you to join us this Friday, Nov 15, at 4:45-6:45pm CT, CWAC 152 for our third VMPEA of the quarter. We are happy to welcome:

Seonghee Ha

PhD Student, UChicago, Department of Art History

Who will be presenting a paper titled:

“The Brush and the Blade: Yi Jaegwan’s Figures and the Rise of Chivalrous Courtesans in Nineteenth-Century Joseon” 

This workshop will take place in hybrid format. For those who would like to join online, please register here.

Please see the abstract and bio for this workshop below.

We hope to see many of you there!

 

Yi Jaegwan (1783–ca. 1838), Figures, early 19th century, ink and color on paper, approx. 139.4 × 66.7 cm (panel). National Museum of Korea, Seoul.

Abstract:

This paper explores the rise of chivalrous courtesans (hyeopgi) in the art world of nineteenth-century Joseon, in its search for the possible commissioner of Figures (Gosa inmul do). Created by Yi Jaegwan (1783–ca. 1838), a professional painter active in early nineteenth-century Joseon Korea (1392-1910), Figures consists of six paintings. Four of them are imaginary portraits of women in antiquity who were famous as talented women (cainü) or female knights-errant (nüxia). The others focused on the ideal life of recluses. The images and the poems written on these pictures show the painter’s intention to represent the figures as romantic partners. Talented women and female knights-errant were considered ideal companions by some nineteenth-century Joseon literati. Making the most of this trend, courtesans (gisaeng), especially the ones at the upper level of their profession, positioned themselves as “chivalrous courtesans” who were qualified both as talented women and female knights-errant. Their purpose was to be perceived as a perfect match for scholar-gentry men.

Among those chivalrous courtesans, it is highly possible that Kim Uncho (ca. 1800–before 1857) played an active role in the creation of Figures. She was a renowned poet and a concubine of Kim Iyang (1755–1845), a high ranking official from the prestigious Andong Kim clan who was 45 years older than her. Jo Huiryong (1789–1866) and Gang Jin (1807–1858), who wrote inscriptions on Figures, seem to have frequently gathered at Yi Jaegwan’s studio named Heunyeon’gwan. Kim Uncho was also a member of this literati circle. The selection of figures and the way in which the inscriptions were written on Figures are highly suggestive of the presence of Kim Uncho behind the making of Figures. In this study, Figures is recognized as an important piece of evidence highlighting that courtesans were active as appreciators, clients, and patrons of paintings in nineteenth-century Korea, as found in the case of Kim Uncho.

Bio:

Seonghee Ha is a PhD student in the Department of Art History at the University of Chicago, specializing in East Asian art. Her research focuses on courtesans who were active in the art world of early modern East Asia, particularly how they shaped and re-invented the concept of “love” in the visual arts. She aims to examine the subtle ways in which female agency has been constructed and operated throughout East Asian art history. Seonghee received her BA in Aesthetics and MA in Art History from Seoul National University. Her MA thesis explored an early nineteenth-century Joseon screen depicting Chinese female figures and its possible connection to Kim Uncho, a renowned Korean courtesan (gisaeng).

Yuzhe Cao, The Transcendent Landscape

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We cordially invite you to join us next Friday, Nov 8, at 4:45-6:45pm CT, CWAC 152 for our second VMPEA workshop this fall. This workshop features:

 

Yuzhe Cao

MAPH 2nd Year, UChicago

Who will be presenting the paper titled:

“The Transcendent Landscape: Xu Daoning’s Fisherman and the Scholar-Official Viewers in the mid-Northern Song Dynasty” 

Discussant: Wei-Cheng Lin

Associate Professor of Art History and the College, UChicago

This workshop will take place in hybrid format. For those who would like to join online, please register here.

Please see the abstract and bios for this workshop below.

 

We hope to see many of you there!

 

 

Xu Daoning, Fisherman, handscroll, ink and slight color on silk, 48.26 × 225.4 cm. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.

 

Abstract:

Xu Daoning 許道寧 (ca. 970-1052), a landscape artist active in the mid-Northern Song era, received considerable respect from both art critics and scholar-officials in his day. Nonetheless, the existing scholarship has often discussed Xu’s works from the perspective of the Li-Guo landscape lineage. Despite this recognition of his connection to Li Cheng 李成 (ca. 919-967), Xu Daoning remains a less studied figure in the history of landscape painting in current works, particularly in comparison to Li and Guo Xi 郭熙 (ca. 1000–1090). However, a close examination of his most celebrated work, Fisherman’s Evening Song 漁舟唱晚圖 (hereafter Fisherman), painted around 1050, reveals that it transcends mere imitation of Li Cheng’s artistic styles. Its unique chronotope reflects the distinct social and cultural milieu of its time.

This paper explores the interplay between Xu Daoning’s Fisherman and its special intended audience in the mid-Northern Song Dynasty, namely the scholar-officials/literati. I argue Fisherman resonates deeply with the cultural landscape of the contemporary scholar-officials. Following a short biography of the artist himself, the paper will analyze three aspects of the painting: the progressively-viewed handscroll, the sacred mountain, and the prominent figures. In the last section, I will examine how the culture of landscape poetry and mental reclusion fostered under the reign of Emperor Renzong 宋仁宗 (r. 1022-1063) might have contributed to the unique illustration of the landscape within Fisherman. Ultimately, this analysis aims to illuminate how the painting reflects the literary and philosophical trends embraced by scholar-officials during the mid-Northern Song era.

Bio:

Yuzhe Cao is a second-year MAPH student at the University of Chicago, studying medieval and pre-modern Chinese art, with a focus on tomb art and landscape paintings. He received his BA in history from the Ohio State University. He is interested in exploring the narrativity across different art mediums and how difference in materiality would affect the selection of various visual motifs.

 

Wei-Cheng Lin specializes in the history of Chinese art and architecture with a focus on medieval periods. His primary research interests concern issues of visual and material culture in Buddhist art and architecture and China’s funerary practice through history. He is the author of Building a Sacred Mountain: The Buddhist Architecture of China’s Mount Wutai (University of Washington Press, 2014). He has additionally published on a variety of topics, including collecting history, photography and architecture, the historiography of Chinese architectural history, and contemporary Chinese art. Lin is currently working on two book projects: Performative Architecture of China explores architecture’s performative potential through history and the meanings enacted through such architectural performance. Necessarily Incomplete: Fragments of Chinese Artifacts investigates fragments of Chinese artifacts, as well as the cultural practices they solicited and engaged, to locate their agentic power in generating the multivalent significance of those artifacts, otherwise undetectable or overlooked. Lin is also the Faculty Director for the Dispersed Chinese Art Digitalization Project (DCADP), a digital humanities initiative supported by the Cyrus Tang Foundation.

PETER DENG, THE BORDERLESS CIRCLE: YOSHIHARA JIRŌ’S ENSO

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We cordially invite you to join us on Friday, October 25, at 4:45-6:45pm CT, CWAC 152 for our first VMPEA workshop this fall. This workshop features:

 

Peter Yuheng Deng

MAPH 2nd Year, UChicago

 

Who will be presenting the paper titled:

“The Borderless Circle: Yoshihara Jirō’s Enso” 

 

This workshop will take place in hybrid format. For those who would like to join online, please register here.

Please see the abstract and bio for this workshop below.

We hope to see many of you there!

 

Image: Jiro Yoshihara (1950-1972), White Circle on Black. 1965. Acrylics on canvas. 182.0 × 227.5cm. National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo.

 

Abstract:

This paper examines a lesser-explored aspect of Yoshihara Jirō’s work, focusing on his Enso paintings, and situates these works within the context of the internationalization of “dentō” or tradition in the Japanese postwar avant-garde movement. The Enso paintings, created in oil and acrylic, represent Yoshihara’s response to combat the systematic marginalization of non-Western art in a predominantly Euro-American art world. By leveraging the Zen symbol of Enso, Yoshihara aimed to establish a more equitable form of artistic exchange that transcends cultural boundaries, promoting a “borderless” dialogue.

The Enso, a symbol of enlightenment in Zen Buddhism, signifies the non-dualistic nature of reality, challenging distinctions between representation and abstraction, as well as between writing and picturing. Yoshihara’s choice of this symbol was not a superficial nod to Japanese tradition but a deeply considered effort to integrate Japan’s cultural heritage into the global abstract expressionist movement. His work sought to counteract the perception of Japanese art as marginal and derivative, highlighting its intrinsic value within the global art narrative.

This paper explores how Yoshihara’s abstract renderings of Enso, through their imperfect and eccentric forms, embody the principles of Zen and engage with the aesthetics of abstract expressionism. It examines the significance of the Enso in Zen practice, where it serves as both an artistic and spiritual exercise, and how Yoshihara recontextualized this tradition within his modernist framework.

Yoshihara’s Enso paintings are analyzed in the context of their historical reception, particularly the challenges faced during the First Japanese Art Festival in Chicago in 1966 and the earlier skepticism from Western critics. By drawing parallels between traditional Zen calligraphy and modern abstract art, the paper argues that Yoshihara’s work represents a crucial intersection between Eastern and Western art forms, contributing to a more inclusive and multifaceted understanding of postwar global art as transnational history.

Yoshihara Jirō’s Enso paintings reflect a synthesis of East Asian and Western artistic traditions, advancing a vision of art that transcends cultural and geographical boundaries. His work exemplifies a deliberate effort to reframe Japanese art within a global context, overcoming representation and eliding the differences between writing and picturing, ethnicity and universality.

 

Bio:

Peter Yuheng Deng is a master’s student in Art History at the University of Chicago, specializing in Japanese 19th-20th century Japanese art. He holds a bachelor’s degree in East Asian Studies from Haverford College. His current research explores the role of tradition in early post-war Japanese contemporary art and how material culture challenges the dichotomies between East and West, local and universal.

Beyond his academic pursuits, Yuheng is also a passionate performance artist and painter. His creative practice seeks to blend diverse artistic forms, particularly through theater and performance painting. By merging his artistic practice with his theoretical research, Yuheng aims to address canonical issues in contemporary East Asian art and foster new dialogues between traditional and modern expressions.

VMPEA Fall 2024 Schedule

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The Visual and Material Perspectives on East Asia (VMPEA) workshop is pleased to announce the Fall 2024 schedule. All the in-person events will meet on selected Fridays from 4:45 to 6:45 pm CT at CWAC (Cochrane-Woods Art Center) 152 unless otherwise noted. If a presenter opts for a hybrid format with online audience, we will send out a registration link prior to these events. You are welcome to subscribe to our listserv to receive event notifications.

 

Fall 2024 Schedule

October 25

Peter Deng, MAPH 2nd Year, UChicago

“The Borderless Circle: Yoshihara Jirō’s Enso”

November 8

Yuzhe Cao, MAPH 2nd Year, UChicago

“Transcendent Landscape: Fisherman and the Scholar-official Viewers in the mid-Northern Song Dynasty”

November 15*

Seonghee Ha, PhD Student, Art History, UChicago

“The Brush and the Blade: Yi Jaegwan’s Figures and the Rise of Chivalrous Courtesans in Nineteenth-Century Joseon”

*Please note the new date

December 3*

Meng-Hsuan Lee, PhD Candidate, Columbia University (Art History) | Lecturer in the Department of Art History, Theory, and Criticism, School of the Art Institute of Chicago

“Japanese Aryanism for the Tropics: Ide Kaoru’s Round-Arch Style in Colonial Taiwan”

*Please note the new date

December 13

You Wang, Harper-Schmidt Fellow in the Society of Fellows | Collegiate Assistant Professor in the Social Sciences, UChicago

“Dike Dynamics: Farmers, Scholars, and Polder Design in Jiangnan, 1400–1810”

Please feel free to contact Taylor (chisato@uchicago.edu) and Lucien (lesun@uchicago.edu) with any questions you might have, and we look forward to seeing you soon!

 

All the best,

Taylor Stewart & Lucien Sun

VMPEA Coordinators, 2024–25

[Co-Sponsored with OPC] Reiko Tomii, “Thinking Operationally”

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Please join us next Wednesday, May 15, at 4:45-6:45pm CT, CWAC 152 for our next and very last VMPEA workshop of the academic year, co-sponsored with DoVA’s Open Practice Committee. This workshop features:

 

Reiko Tomii

Independent Art Historian and Curator

 

Who will be presenting the talk titled:

“Thinking Operationally” 

 

Discussant: Tongji Philip Qian

Artist and Collegiate Assistant Professor, Department of Visual Arts, UChicago

 

This workshop will take place in-person only. Please see the abstract and bios for this workshop below.

We hope to see many of you there before the year ends!

 

Image Credit: Courtesy of Misa Shin Gallery, Tokyo.

 

Abstract/Statement

The twin-book project that I launched in late 2022, “Thinking Operationally,” centers on the concept of “operation” as an integral part of art history. My starting point is a new definition of an artist labor, which in my definition consists of two parts, “expression” and “operation.” While the first type of labor, “expressions,” typically takes place inside the artist’s studio, the second type of labor, “operations,” concerns making their work public and, when necessary, building systems to support themselves and engage society outside the studio. By extension, I define “operation,” either by the artist and others, as a set of activities that generate channels or circuits through which the artist’s expression is communicated to society at large.

This view emerged from my close study of collectivism in modern Japan, which dates back to the last 19th century and continued into the 21st century. In fact, Japan serves as a counter reference point to the Euro-American idea of artistic autonomy, because artists’ group activities have been essential for advancing new art and for building new art systems in modern Japan.

Based on this conceptualization, I have envisioned the two-book project. The first is a one-year plan to write a small book, titled “Thinking Operationally,” in Japanese to outline the theoretical import of “operations” in modern Japan and examine seven topics including Gutai, artist-organized independent exhibitions, and Tokyo Biennale 1970. For this part, I have a publisher confirmed (East Press in Tokyo) and I am in the process of completing the first draft. The second is a five-year plan to follow the first, for which I am planning an English-language survey of 1960s art in Japan which will reconsider the role and place of “operation” by focusing on the exhibition history. Provisionally titled “Exhibition as Expression, Exhibition as Operation,” the book will explore the exhibitions as the vital site of communication and socialization of expression for artists as much as curators and museums. In doing so, the book will illuminate the crucial postwar decade when Japan’s contemporary art rapidly expanded in a dual drive of both a top-down push of institutionalization in the mainstream and a bottom-up urgency of the wilderness.

 

Bios

Reiko Tomii is an independent scholar and curator specializing in postwar Japanese art history. In 1988–92, she worked at the Center for International Contemporary Art (CICA), where her first project involved organizing a personal archive of Kusama Yayoi for CICA’s inaugural exhibition. Kusama’s first retrospective in the U.S. in 1989, for which Tomii collaborated with Alexandra Munroe, brought the Japanese artist back to New York and in retrospect launched Kusama’s ascendance to global super stardom. Since 1992, upon the closure of CICA, Tomii has worked as independent scholar. She collaborated with Munroe on the latter’s book published in conjunction with the exhibition Japanese Art After 1945: Scream Against the Sky.

Curatorially, she worked with Queens Museum of Art in New York for Global Conceptualism, Tate Modern in London for Century City, and Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles for Art, Anti-Art, Non-Art, among many others. While widely published in the area of modern and contemporary Asian art, she has enjoyed working with younger and emerging scholars, and co-founded PoNJA-GenKon with Miwako Tezuka in 2003.

Tomii’s first monograph Radicalism in the Wilderness: International Contemporaneity and 1960s Art in Japan (MIT Press, 2016) received the 2017 Robert Motherwell Book Award and was turned into an exhibition Radicalism in the Wilderness: Japanese Artists in the Global 1960s at Japan Society Gallery in New York in 2019. In 2020, she received the Commissioner for Cultural Affairs Award from the Japanese government for cultural transmission and international exchange through postwar Japanese art history.

She is currently preparing for the publication of her second monograph, Thinking Operationally: Toward a Global Narration of Japanese-Type Modernism. Published by East Press in Tokyo, the book is her first monograph in Japanese and will serve as the foundation of her third monograph, to be published in English, provisionally titled, Exhibition as Expression, Exhibition as Operation: Japanese Art in the 1960s and 1970s.

 

Tongji Philip Qian is a multidisciplinary artist and the co-founder of TPQ Studio. As artist, he is interested in capturing the edge of an artistic practice through his idiosyncratic definitions of #speed, #labor, #internationalism, and #immigration. His art writing, on the other hand, studies movements commonly associated with Minimalism, Post-Minimalism, and Conceptual art. Tongji Philip Qian’s recent projects include “No-risk Hour” (2019–), “Neighborly Passport Keep Right Except to Pass” (2023), “Questionnairing Reality” (2021), and “Art Beside a Single Handshake” (2020). His work is housed in a number of public collections, such as the Asia Art Archive in America, Center for Book Arts, and the RISD Museum. Qian received his BAs in art history and mathematics from Carleton College and his MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. Tongji Philip Qian is currently a Harper-Schmidt Fellow and Collegiate Assistant Professor in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of Chicago. 

In spring 2024, Qian launched the State VIII Project (2024-2027), an artist-run project space in Hyde Park, Chicago, USA, and the State VIII Project Artist and Writer Residency Program, a free-of-charge experience offering creative professionals uninterrupted time and space to consider their work.

Feng Schöneweiß, “Provenance, Memory, and Transcultural Monumentality: Chinese Monumental Vase as ‘national wertvolles Kulturgut’ in German Cultural History, 1717–2019”

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We cordially invite you to join us next *Monday*, May 6, at 4:45-6:45pm CT for a special virtual-only session. Please register for zoom access here. This workshop features:

 

Feng Schöneweiß

Postdoctoral Fellow, Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz—Max-Planck-Institut

  

Who will be presenting the paper titled:

“Provenance, Memory, and Transcultural Monumentality: Chinese Monumental Vase as ‘national wertvolles Kulturgut’ in German Cultural History, 1717–2019”

 

*Please note the special day and format of this event.* The abstract and bio for this workshop can be found below.

 

~We hope to see many of you there~

 

Image: Walter Möbius (1900–1959), photograph of the banquet hall, 1933. Three-century jubilee exhibition “August der Starke und seine Zeit” [Augustus the Strong and his time] at the Dresden Residence Schloss, 13 April to 17 September 1933. Deutsche Fotothek, df_hauptkatalog_0051726. © SLUB / Deutsche Fotothek / Möbius, Walter

 

Abstract

The concept of cultural heritage in modern nation states is often associated with the connotation of the national. From the perspectives of global art history and transcultural studies, how to understand the accumulation of national significance in the formation of transcultural heritage? This paper addresses the merging conceptual dichotomy by a case study of transcultural monumentality. It examines how one of the so-called Dragoon Vases (Dragonervasen), large blue-and-white porcelain jars with lids made in Jingdezhen in circa 1690, became a cultural property of national significance (national wertvolles Kulturgut), the highest level of cultural heritage defined by Cultural Property Protection Act (Kulturgutschutzgesetz) in Germany. Based on a survey and typology of Chinese monumental vases (chinesische Monumentalvasen), a period term invented by museum professionals at the Dresden Porcelain Collection around 1900, the paper investigates the identity-forming impact of both the vases and their provenance on the eighteenth-century Porcelain-Regiment of Prussia, the baroque locality of Dresden in the eyes of travelers, generations of nineteenth- and twentieth-century German museum professionals, and the institutional identity of the collection. Substantiated with archives, inventories, architectural and exhibition designs, photography, and manuscripts in Dresden, the paper argues that the provenance of the Chinese vases, rather than their extraordinary materiality, embedded the global objects in the local cultural memory that contextualized the transculturation of heritage.

Bio

Feng Schöneweiß is an art historian of ecocritical and transcultural perspectives. He is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the 4A_Lab, Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz–Max-Planck-Institut (KHI) in cooperation with the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation. At the KHI, his postdoc project examines the mutual making of porcelain and Jingdezhen eco-systems through the analytical lens of energy consumption. Feng earned his doctorate in East Asian art history and transcultural studies at the University of Heidelberg. He was among the cohort at the inaugural University of Chicago/Getty Dissertation Workshop on Chinese Art History in 2018. His dissertation explores how German museum professionals fostered the cultural memory of transcultural objects while initiating a new field of art-historical inquiry. The current paper is a chapter of his first book manuscript, titled “Provenance and Monumentality: Chinese Porcelain, German Curators, and Global Art History in Dresden from 1700 to 2020.”

Feng has received grants and fellowships from American Ceramic Circle, Bei Shan Tang Foundation, DAAD, German Research Foundation (DFG) Excellence Initiative, Historians of Eighteenth-Century Art and Architecture, Max Planck Society, and University of Heidelberg. He has published in Chinese, English, and German, and made curatorial contribution to major exhibitions at Berlin State Museums, Dresden State Art Collections, Museum of Applied Art in Frankfurt am Main, and Shanghai University Museum.

Sizhao Yi, “Melancholic Things in Chen Hongshou’s Sixteen Views of Living in Reclusion”

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We cordially invite you to join us on Wednesday, May 1, at 4:45-6:45pm CT, CWAC 152 for our next VMPEA workshop. This workshop features:

 

Sizhao Yi

PhD Candidate, Art History, UChicago

 

Who will be presenting the paper titled:

“Melancholic Things in Chen Hongshou’s Sixteen Views of Living in Reclusion” 

 

Discussant: Yun-chen Lu

Assistant Professor, History of Art and Architecture, DePaul University

 

This workshop will take place in-person. Please see the abstract and bios for this workshop below.

We hope to see many of you there!

 

Image: Chen Hongshou, Album leaf from Sixteen Views of Living in Reclusion, 1651. National Palace Museum, Taipei.

 

Abstract:

In this talk, I will explore the affective effect of things in the visual repertoire of Chen Hongshou (1599-1652) through two paintings from the painter’s late masterpiece, the Sixteen Views of Living in Reclusion album. In these works, objects – a group of inkstones and a covered zither – are portrayed with rich yet peculiar details, interacting intimately with the figures. By closely attending to the pictorial details and analyzing them within the historical context,  I will suggest that these objects and their interactions with the figures delineate the nuances of the yimin sentiments towards the fallen Ming Dynasty among early Qing scholars. In fact, these objects are painted with such intentionality, subtlety and vividness that they visualize, materialize, and even animate the abstract mental state of melancholy. Through these objects, the viewer is not only reminded of but also let to reflect upon and even feel the past and its vestiges.

 

Bios:

Sizhao Yi is a PhD candidate specializing in the visual and material culture of Late Imperial China. Her dissertation engages with issues of material and materiality, image making, intermediality, and the agency of things through the lenses of Chen Hongshou’s artistic practices and his engagements with material artifacts. Prior to starting her PhD, she received a Bachelor’s degree in Journalism from the University of Hong Kong, and an MA from the University of Chicago. She also interned at the textile conservation department in the Archaeology Institute at Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. She currently serves as the Rhoades Curatorial Intern and Frankenthaler/Taylor Fellow at the Art Institute of Chicago.

 

Yun-chen Lu is an Assistant Professor of History of Art and Architecture at DePaul University. She specializes in Chinese painting and calligraphy, visual and material culture, artists with disabilities, and East Asian interregional art history. Her current research project investigates the relationship between artists with disabilities and the trend of artistic eccentricity in eighteenth-century Yangzhou, and the development of disability art and aesthetics in China. Before joining DePaul University in 2022, she was a predoctoral research fellow at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art.

[Co-sponsored with RAVE] Jenny Harris, “Ray Johnson, Sybil Shearer, and the Taoist Collages”

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Please join us on Wednesday, April 24, at *5:30-7:30pm CT*, at CWAC 152 for a workshop co-sponsored by VMPEA and RAVE (Research in Art and Visual Evidence). This workshop features:

 

Jenny Harris

PhD Candidate, Art History, UChicago

Who will be presenting the paper titled:

“Ray Johnson, Sybil Shearer, and the Taoist Collages” 

Discussant: Lucien Sun

PhD Candidate, Art History, UChicago

~Reception to follow in the CWAC Lounge~

*Please note the special time of this event.* This workshop will take place in-person. The abstract and bios for this workshop can be found below.

 

We hope to see many of you in CWAC 152!

Abstract: 

In 1955, Ray Johnson, an artist based in New York who would go on to become a pioneer of mail art, sent a group of 30 “Taoist Collages” to choreographer Sybil Shearer, then living in Northbrook, Illinois. Previously unknown to scholars of Johnson’s work, the collages were discovered in Shearer’s attic and subsequently purchased by the Art Institute of Chicago in 2022. In this talk, I’ll discuss the various ways the Taoist collages tell a new story about Johnson’s ties to the world of dance. By presenting this work jointly at the RAVE and VMPEA workshops, I hope to solicit feedback and suggestions about how I might develop a more thorough account of Johnson’s engagement with East Asian culture and ideas.

 

Bios:

Jenny Harris is a Ph.D. candidate specializing in twentieth-century art at the University of Chicago. Her research explores global modernism with interests in the relationships between abstraction and ornament, dance and visual art, and craft and design. Her writing has appeared in several exhibition catalogues, Artforum, the Journal of Surrealism and the Americas, and the New York Times. Between 2013 and 2019, she worked in The Museum of Modern Art’s Department of Painting and Sculpture where she assisted with the Robert Rauschenberg retrospective and the reinstallation of the collection. She also co-organized the 2019 Exhibition Artist’s Choice: The Shape of Shape with Amy Sillman and Michelle Kuo. In 2022-3, she worked as a Chicago Objects Study Initiative Fellow in Modern and Contemporary at the Art Institute of Chicago. She graduated from Wellesley College with a B.A. in Art History in 2012.

Lucien Sun is a PhD candidate in the Department of Art History at the University of Chicago. He received his Bachelor’s degree from Fudan University, Shanghai. In 2017–18, he was a Sumitomo Corporation visiting student at the University of Tokyo studying Japanese collections of Chinese and East Asian art. His dissertation explores the dynamic relationship between regional space and the visual culture of southern Shanxi in north China between the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries. He is also interested in the art of book and how picture in its broad sense moved across space, borders, and visual media in medieval Eurasia.

Elvin Meng, “Fragments into Voice into Fragments: Manuscript Culture and the Nineteenth-Century Manchu Curriculum”

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We cordially invite you to join us on Wednesday, April 17, for the second VMPEA workshop of the quarter, taking place at our usual time at 4:45-6:45pm CT, CWAC 152. This workshop will feature:

 

Elvin Meng

PhD Candidate, Comparative Literature & EALC, UChicago

 

Discussant: Peter Kornicki

Emeritus Professor of Japanese Studies, University of Cambridge

Visiting Professor, UChicago

 

Who will be presenting the paper titled:

“Fragments into Voice into Fragments:

Manuscript Culture and the Nineteenth-Century Manchu Curriculum”

 

This event will take place in-person. For participants who would like to join via Zoom, please register here. Please see the abstract and bios for this workshop below.

 

We hope to see many of you in CWAC 152!

 

 

Abstract

Drawing on a genre of Sino-Manchu manuscripts I frequently encounter in archival research, this presentation gives a preliminary sketch of the entanglements between materiality (the production, circulation, and consumption of print and manuscript texts), sociality (which can be pedagogical, bureaucratic, commercial, familial), and semiotics (translatability, orality, authenticity) in nineteenth-century Sino-Manchu language pedagogical practice. Although I will give my tentative reconstruction of the typical Manchu language curriculum in private bannered schools in late-Qing Beijing, the focus of my presentation will be on a single genre of students’ materials—collections of short, vernacular dialogues known in Manchu as meyen and in Vernacular Sinitic as huatiaozi 話條子—that young children copied, read aloud, and memorized from day to day in these schools. Certain collections of meyen were put to print throughout the Qing period, but the genre primarily circulated in the form of manuscripts, as they were constantly modified, exchanged, or written anew in classrooms, familial or friend circles, or the book market.

 

The proliferation of meyen in nineteenth-century Beijing manuscript culture, then, requires an analysis across multiple levels—material, textual, social, institutional, conceptual, etc.—that present challenges. The complication is increased by the fact that little is recorded of the historical use of meyen texts except on/as the extant meyen artifacts themselves. As I am in the early stages of thinking through this genre of manuscripts, this talk will focus on some basic but important questions: What are their typical material features? What was their place in Manchu language education, which was in effect an education in Sino-Manchu translation? What did their readers do with them? What can be known about their production and circulation? In asking these questions, I will be led to also investigate the place of meyen in the conceptual-material ecology of Manchu writing at large, as the meyen genre played an important role in the Qing politicization of the texture, voicing, and history of language itself.

 

Bio

Elvin Meng is a doctoral candidate in Comparative Literature and East Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago. His research interests include intellectual history, media theory, translation studies, and early modern Northeast Asia.

 

Peter Kornicki is emeritus professor of Japanese Studies at the University of Cambridge and currently a visiting professor at the University of Chicago. He is the author of Languages, Scripts and Chinese Texts in East Asia (2018), Eavesdropping on the Emperor: Interrogators and Codebreakers in Britain’s War with Japan (2021) and many other works.